That’s the first thing I notice about the surrounding Apostle Islands as our tour boat leaves the Bayfield, Wisconsin, dock.

The second is that these islands spread across larger distances than it appears on the Apostle Islands

Apostle Island Cruises

Apostle Island Cruises’ sunset Grand Tour arrives at Devils Island just as the sun illuminates the sea caves to the best advantage.

Cruises map I’m holding.

And the third observation – today’s rough, choppy water reminds me that this is Lake Superior, and the vague notion I’d harbored to launch a kayak for leisurely island exploration fades quickly.

This Apostle Islands National Lakeshore map shows the relationship of the 21 islands (including Madeline, which is not in the park). Some of the islands have more than one light tower. History goes that early European explorers thought there were 12 islands, thus the “apostles” name.

I have to steady myself, one hand on the railing, to read the map as we rock against the swells.

Even though it’s a sunny early September day, I’m grateful for my windbreaker and long pants. The refreshing breeze on the shore in Bayfield is now a chill wind, blowing across the cold Lake surface.

As the Ashland Bayfield Express plows toward Devils Island, on the archipelago’s outside ring, my gaze swivels from Madeline Island, a familiar 20-minute ferry ride, to the rest of the islands. I understand why the Apostles once boasted nine light towers on its 22 islands, the highest concentration of lighthouses in the Great Lakes. Eight still remain visible.

Built between 1857 and 1929, these picture-perfect structures create a sampler of Great Lakes lighthouse design and technology.

Apostle lighthouses first guided boats to the fur-trading village of La Pointe on Madeline Island. By 1900, their primary purpose was to help ship traffic around the islands and into the bustling ports of Bayfield, Washburn and Ashland.

My map shows the usual routes of summer cruises, but since our tour is part of the Apostle Islands Lighthouse Celebration, I suspect we’ll head straight to Devils Island. We do.

This late-August to mid-September celebration attracts lighthouse lovers from around the country who return year after year to visit all the lights. (It’s hard to reach them all in one year.) Some make the celebration an annual stop on pilgrimages to other Great Lakes or saltwater-coast lighthouses. It is the only time of the year that the cruises actually dock at certain islands, like Devils.

Today the weather easily separates long-distance visitors from Lake-familiar residents. The folks in shorts and sandals speaking with soft Southern accents, Texas drawls or distinctive New Jersey vowels already have clambered from the deck into the sheltered interior. We left up top are wearing fleeces or jackets, warm hats and sturdy footwear, and many speak with that hint of Scandinavian ancestry. Uff da.

We cruise between Bear Island on our left and Otter Island on our right. A young National Park Service ranger points out a recently wrecked sailboat on the southeast end of Bear. It broke anchor at 2 a.m. during a late-August storm and washed ashore; the Coast Guard rescued the people on board.

Even without the binoculars the ranger passes around, we see the broken mast and the boat tilted into the sand. The Coast Guard will go to extraordinary lengths to save human life, but much less so to rescue property.

It brings to mind stories about lighthouse keepers who risked their lives to save others and also of those who had to watch helplessly as sailors died in the waves below them.

The tilted, beached boat reminds me that this is still a wild, unpredictable place.

The Lake, though, is why I’m here, both on this boat and in our home. My partner in life and adventures, Dick Osgood, and I moved to Duluth from the Twin Cities in 2014, mostly to look at the Lake every day. We knew it would take more than an annual camping trip to explore Lake Superior and its environs.

Dick is a limnologist who trained at the University of Minnesota Duluth, but spent a 40-year career working with freshwater lakes all over North America. With no bias at all, he has concluded: “Lake Superior is the best lake.”

Konnie LeMay / Lake Superior Magazine

All summer, Apostle Islands Cruises has a Grand Tour that takes you by Devils Island, but it only stops during the annual lighthouse celebration.

Despite several trips to Madeline Island, we had yet to thoroughly explore the Apostles.

On our wish list is Apostle Islands Cruises’ “Grand Tour,” a 55-mile, three-hour narrated journey that weaves in and out of the islands with views of a couple of lighthouses and stories about sandstone quarries and fish camps. We’ve heard it’s an extraordinary experience late in the day, when the setting sun lights up the sea caves at the north edge of Devils.

Mark Weller & Jon Okerstrom

A photo series of Apostle lighthouses beneath the Milky Way started as a way to honor the late Martin Hansen, a huge supporter of the Friends of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. This one on Michigan Island by Mark Weller and Jon Okerstrom is for sale with some of other lighthouses to help raise funds for the friends group at friendsoftheapostleislands.org.

It’s also a good way to see the various faces of the islands, different on each side because of how the prevailing winds and waves act on each island’s geology. The dramatic sandstone cliffs on Devils are the first hit when Lake Superior’s spring and winter storms roll across the archipelago, resulting in its famous, much-photographed network of multicolored caves and arches.

On this sunny September day, Dick and I are beginning our Apostle explorations with a visit to the tallest lighthouse in Wisconsin, an 80-foot iron tower on Devils. The current tower, built in 1898 with four buttresses and latticework of iron, replaced a 60-foot wooden tower lit in 1891.

Our captain narrates the history of each island, barely audible over the shuddering noise of the engines and the churning Lake. I leave my seat to join the small group standing close to him, swaying with the boat’s motion.

As we approach the island, the captain informs us that it’s too windy to land on the north end, with its very short walk to the lighthouse. We’ll land at the south-end pier, leaving slightly more than a mile hike to the light station.

We have about two hours to picnic and explore and later, if the wind allows, the captain promises, we’ll swing around the island to view the sea caves on the return trip. On shore, the ranger warns us to stay back from the rock cornices edging the island, points out the restrooms up the path and then bounds ahead to unlock the lighthouse tower.

The Devils Island path proves to be its own adventure, passing through bogs and boreal forest, leaving the Lake’s water-fresh scent for a woody-musty smell.

We dodge mossy sandstone boulders, watch birds weave through the trees and spot late-season wildflowers hidden under fading ferns. We stop to photograph some unusual lichen.

Keeper of the Light

Sand Island Lighthouse, considered by many one of the most beautiful of the Apostle lights, was built with locally quarried sandstone.

Eventually, we reach a clearing with tall grasses, flowers and two Queen Anne-style dwellings in use until the last five-member crew left in 1978. Summer volunteers can apply to stay here, if they are prepared to carry gear up the 1-mile path and climb the lighthouse tower several times each weekend with visitors, most arriving in their own watercraft.

Jon Okerstrom

The wind is less bold here. I can feel the sun enough to remove my windbreaker and tie it around my waist.

We eat lunch near the edge of the cliff, far enough back for secure seating on bare rock but close enough to see and hear the waves washing against the enormous walls below us.

We may be facing Grand Marais, or possibly Isle Royale, but all we see is the vast Lake Superior, sparkling in the midday sun.

Soon, it’s our turn to climb the lighthouse tower. The view across the Lake and over the Apostles is breathtaking – literally so on this windy day. I think of Cecilia Carlson, who married keeper Alexander MacLean in 1903 and spent the first six years of married life here, with only the occasional tourist from Bayfield as company.

In her memoir, she marveled that storms threw spray against her living-room windows, 600 feet from the cliff. She had to mop water from her floors and seal her windows with rags. Cecelia lived at light stations with her husband for 30 years, and never developed a liking for it.

On this summery day, I can imagine being happy here, even being awed by the power of a November storm. But my imagination – and likely my tolerance – doesn’t extend to winter week after winter week, year after year, with only a three- to four-month break off in the worst of the season.

The trek back to the landing goes quickly, and the captain announces that the wind seems to be cooperating, so we’ll attempt to circle the island. We pass the sea caves, honeycombed cliffs supported by sandstone pegs. In the afternoon sun, the blues, greens and golds blend into a painting, begun a billion years ago.

The waves wash in and out of the caves, and we hear a hint of the otherworldly sound that’s intrigued many who came before us, including the Ojibwe people, whose history is inextricably entwined with these islands.

The Ojibwe people journeyed for decades from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Madeline Island, Mooningwanekaaning-minis, “Home of the Golden-Breasted Flicker,” in a history long before the building of the Apostle lighthouses.

I try to envision navigating these waters with only a canoe and the knowledge I’ve gained from a few people who did it before me. While fascinated by those times past, I’m grateful to be a visitor now.

As we head home from Devils Island, I’m thinking about being a visitor again and wondering which lighthouse to choose.

Oh my … I’ve spent time on each of the lighthouses soaking up their beauty, charm and fabulous night skies. (The) question is akin to asking a parent which child do they love the most. But if I had to be pinned down I’d say the old Michigan Island lighthouse. In today’s world, it oozes charm with its fresh coat of paint and refurbished museum look. But its history is iconic, being the first light built on the islands way back in pre-Civil War 1857. And its story is just weird, given that it was supposedto be built on another island. Stack all that up and place it under the darkest skies in the upper Midwest and the light on Michigan Island is a keeper.

Mark Weller, lead photographer for Friends of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore

I’d have to say Outer Island Light is my favorite, but it is difficult to choose. I’m so fortunate to have nine historic light towers to choose from. I’d say Outer is my favorite because the lighthouse itself is so sturdy, substantial and proud … and as the farthest from the mainland, it stands guard over the Apostles like no other.

Bob Krumenaker, superintendent, Apostle Islands National Lakeshore

Joe and I kind of feel like Sand Island is our very own lighthouse. We live on a hill by Sandy Bay and can see the island in the winter. That little lighthouse is made of stones from the island. I love the hike to the light – 2 miles in and 2 miles back – through old-growth forest, mossy and spooky. But it’s a flat island and an easy hike, especially since the Park Service put in boardwalks.

Mary Grant, co-owner with her husband, Joe, of Keeper of the Light Gift Shop in Bayfield

Mark Weller

Outer Island, the most remote in the Apostles, boasts a beautiful light tower. The National Park Service has added terracing to help slow or eliminate erosion by the station, which faces directly north into the most harsh winds and waves Lake Superior can sometimes deliver.

Apostle Islands Cruises, the official National Park Service concessionaire, offers almost daily summer cruises to Raspberry and Michigan islands, where lighthouse tours are available for a small additional fee. The cruise service stops at Devils, Sand and Outer islands only during the lighthouse celebration. During both the summer season and the lighthouse celebration, the cruise service offers many tours where you can see several of the Apostle lighthouses from the water, as well as the sea caves.

An option only for those with adequate experience would be to rent canoes, kayaks or sailboats from Bayfield area outfitters.

Onshore activities during the celebration include concerts, book signings, photo exhibits and talks.

Cruise reservations are advised, especially if you have your heart set on a particular light. Good to know, for instance, is that the success rate for docking at Outer is only 50 percent during the celebration because of wind and wave conditions. Michigan also can be inaccessible for two or three days at a time. It’s worth the trip, though. In 2016, as part of a $7 million renovation of the lighthouses, a new exhibit opened there about the history of all nine lights.

A frequent visitor question is “Why is our cruise canceled? It’s perfectly calm out there!” Trust the skipper on this; placid waters in the sheltered harbor might belie 6-foot waves crashing over island docks. Plus weather conditions can and do change more quickly than you’d expect. Dress in layers, bring a hooded jacket and gloves, and wear socks and sturdy shoes if you’re walking to a light. The cruise boats sell bottled water and light snacks and have restrooms (“heads” in boat lingo). Or pack a picnic (but carry out your trash). Bring bug spray and sunscreen.

Long Island - New La Pointe 67-foot light tower (pictured): built 1897, automated 1964. Still in service, not open to the public. Old La Pointe Lighthouse with 34-foot tower (not pictured): built 1858, retired 1897, used as housing until 1940. Foundation ruins still visible.
Source: www.nps.gov/apis.

Judy Budreau’s writing appears in regional and national media, as well as obscure literary journals. She lives in Duluth with her scientist partner who is certain physics explains the world while she’s equally certain it’s explained by poetry.